(Reuters) – Jeff Bezos-backed Perplexity AI has entered fundraising talks in which it plans to more than double its valuation to $8 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
Perplexity told investors it plans to raise about $500 million in the new funding round, the Journal reported citing people familiar with the matter.
The Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence (AI) company’s estimated annualized revenue, based on its recent sales, is currently around $50 million, the report added.
Perplexity AI declined to comment.
In October, the startup said it received a “cease and desist” notice from the New York Times asking it to stop using the newspaper’s content for generative AI purposes.
Perplexity has previously faced accusations from media organizations such as Forbes and Wired for plagiarizing their content, but has since launched a revenue sharing program to address some concerns expressed by publishers.
Perplexity’s research tools allow users to get instant answers to questions with sources and citations. It’s powered by a variety of large language models (LLMs) that can summarize and generate insights, from OpenAI to Meta’s open source Llama model.
(Reporting by Gursimran Kaur in Bangalore; Editing by Sandra Maler)